Re: [Fis] Is information physical?

[tozziarturo]

Dear Emanuel, 

Hi!
I'm sorry, but the UCLA finding does not put an end to any question.  Indeed, 
this paper about memory transfer has been highly criticized:  

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2018/05/18/epic-snail-about-that-injectable-memory-study/#.Ww-V81UzYps


The term "material" for the definition of information is less correct than 
"physical": indeed, "pyhsical" encompasses also the quantum fields, the 
solitons, the oscillations that, although not being properly "material", 
nevertheless are able to tranfer "information".




> Il 31 maggio 2018 alle 5.55 Emanuel Diamant  ha scritto:
> 
> 
> Dear FIS Colleagues,
> 
>  
> 
> For most of the time, I restrain myself from taking part in the FIS 
> discussions – we speak different languages and adhere to different 
> principles. My paper invited for publication in MDPI Informatics Special 
> Issue: Selected Papers from the ISIS Summit Vienna 2015 has been declined for 
> publication. (Never mind, it was published afterwards in the Research Gate 
> repository https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291352419 ).
> 
>  
> 
> In the concluding part of the paper I enumerate 8 topics in Neuroscience 
> research that require immediate revision taking into consideration the new 
> principles that follow from my definition of information. For example, that 
> information is a material, palpable string of letters and linguistic signs, a 
> piece of text, a textual description. That means that all derivatives of 
> semantic information (thoughts, memories, feelings, and so on) are material 
> entities (“Information as a thing” – once there was a fierce debate around 
> this subject). Or, as Mark Burgin claims: ”Now assuming that information 
> exists, we have only one option, namely, to admit that information is 
> physical because only physical things exist”. (I do not use the term 
> “physical”, I distinguish Physical and Semantic Information. In place of 
> Burgin’s “physical” I prefer to use the term “material”).
> 
>  
> 
> I would not remind you of our old controversies but recently UCLA 
> researchers reported that they have transferred a memory from one marine 
> snail to another (Biologists 'transfer' a memory, Neuroscience 
> https://medicalxpress.com/neuroscience-news/ , May 14, 2018 
> https://medicalxpress.com/archive/14-05-2018/ , University of California, Los 
> Angeles, https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-05-memory-snails.html 
> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-05-memory-snails.html ).
> 
>  
> 
> I hope that the UCLA finding will put an end to the question “Is 
> information material (physical, in Burgin’s inquiry)?” Yes, information is 
> material. Other options do not exist.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Best regards, Emanuel.
> 
>  
> 
 

> ___
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> http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
> 
 


Arturo Tozzi

AA Professor Physics, University North Texas

Pediatrician ASL Na2Nord, Italy

Comput Intell Lab, University Manitoba

http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/ 
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[Fis] Is information physical?

[Emanuel Diamant]

Dear FIS Colleagues,

 

For most of the time, I restrain myself from taking part in the FIS
discussions - we speak different languages and adhere to different
principles. My paper invited for publication in MDPI Informatics Special
Issue: Selected Papers from the ISIS Summit Vienna 2015 has been declined
for publication. (Never mind, it was published afterwards in the Research
Gate repository https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291352419 ).

 

In the concluding part of the paper I enumerate 8 topics in Neuroscience
research that require immediate revision taking into consideration the new
principles that follow from my definition of information. For example, that
information is a material, palpable string of letters and linguistic signs,
a piece of text, a textual description. That means that all derivatives of
semantic information (thoughts, memories, feelings, and so on) are material
entities ("Information as a thing" - once there was a fierce debate around
this subject). Or, as Mark Burgin claims: "Now assuming that information
exists, we have only one option, namely, to admit that information is
physical because only physical things exist". (I do not use the term
"physical", I distinguish Physical and Semantic Information. In place of
Burgin's "physical" I prefer to use the term "material").

 

I would not remind you of our old controversies but recently UCLA
researchers reported that they have transferred a memory from one marine
snail to another (Biologists 'transfer' a memory,
 Neuroscience ,
 May 14, 2018, University of
California, Los Angeles,

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-05-memory-snails.html ). 

 

I hope that the UCLA finding will put an end to the question "Is information
material (physical, in Burgin's inquiry)?" Yes, information is material.
Other options do not exist.

 

 

Best regards, Emanuel.

 

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Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

[Burgin, Mark]

Dear Loet,
Only one remark. There is no Shannon-type information but there is 
Shannon's measure of information, which is called entropy.


Sincerely,
Mark



On 5/23/2018 10:44 PM, Loet Leydesdorff wrote:

Dear Mark, Soren, and colleagues,

The easiest distinction is perhaps Descartes' one between/res 
cogitans/ and/res extensa/ as two different realities. Our knowledge 
in each case that things could have been different is not out there in 
the world as something seizable such as piece of wood.


Similarly, uncertainty in the case of a distribution is not seizable, 
but it can be expressed in bits of information (as one measure among 
others). The grandiose step of Shannon was, in my opinion, to enable 
us to operationalize Descartes'/cogitans/ and make it amenable to the 
measurement as information.


Shannon-type information is dimensionless. It is provided with meaning 
by a system of reference (e.g., an observer or a discourse). Some of 
us prefer to call only thus-meaningful information real information 
because it is embedded. One can also distinguish it from Shannon-type 
information as Bateson-type information. The latter can be debated as 
physical.


In the ideal case of an elastic collision of "billard balls", the 
physical entropy (S= kB * H) goes to zero. However, if two particles 
have a distribution of momenta of 3:7 before a head-on collision, this 
distribution will change in the ideal case into 7:3. Consequently, the 
probabilistic entropy is .7 log2 (.7/.3) + .3 log2 (.3/.7) =  .86 – 
.37 = .49 bits of information. One thus can prove that this 
information is not physical.


Best,
Loet



Loet Leydesdorff

Professor emeritus, University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)

l...@leydesdorff.net ; 
http://www.leydesdorff.net/
Associate Faculty, SPRU, University of 
Sussex;


Guest Professor Zhejiang Univ. , 
Hangzhou; Visiting Professor, ISTIC, 
Beijing;


Visiting Fellow, Birkbeck , University of London;

http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ&hl=en


-- Original Message --
From: "Burgin, Mark" >
To: "Søren Brier" mailto:sbr@cbs.dk>>; "Krassimir 
Markov" mailto:mar...@foibg.com>>; 
"fis@listas.unizar.es" >

Sent: 5/24/2018 4:23:53 AM
Subject: Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis


Dear Søren,
You response perfectly supports my analysis. Indeed, for you only the 
Physical World is real. So, information has to by physical if it is 
real, or it cannot be real if it is not physical.
Acceptance of a more advanced model of the World, which includes 
other realities, as it was demonstrated in my book “Structural 
Reality,” allows understand information as real but not physical.


Sincerely,
   Mark

On 5/17/2018 3:29 AM, Søren Brier wrote:


Dear Mark

Using ’physical’ this way it just tends to mean ’real’, but that 
raises the problem of how to define real. Is chance real? I Gödel’s 
theorem or mathematics and logic in general (the world of form)? Is 
subjectivity and self-awareness, qualia? I do believe you are a 
conscious subject with feelings, but I cannot feel it, see it, 
measure it. Is it physical then?? I only see what you write and your 
behavior. And are the meaning of your sentences physical? So here we 
touch phenomenology (the experiential) and hermeneutics (meaning and 
interpretation) and more generally semiotics (the meaning of signs 
in cognition and communication). We have problems encompassing these 
aspects in the natural, the quantitative and the technical sciences 
that makes up the foundation of most conceptions of information science.


  Best

  Søren

*Fra:*Fis  *På vegne af *Krassimir Markov
*Sendt:* 17. maj 2018 11:33
*Til:* fis@listas.unizar.es; Burgin, Mark 
*Emne:* Re: [Fis] Is information physical? A logical analysis

Dear Mark and FIS Colleagues,

First of all. I support the idea of Mark to write a paper and to 
publish it in IJ ITA.


It will be nice to continue our common work this way.

At the second place, I want to point that till now the discussion on

*Is information physical?*

was more-less chaotic – we had no thesis and antithesis to discuss 
and to come to some conclusions.


I think now, the Mark’s letter may be used as the needed thesis.

What about the ant-thesis? Well, I will try to write something below.

For me, physical, structural and mental  are one and the same.

Mental means physical reflections and physical processes in the 
Infos consciousness. I.e. “physical” include “mental”.


Structure (as I understand this concept) is mental reflection of the 
relationships “between” and/or “in” real (physical) entities as well 
as “between” and/or “in” mental (physical)